Gripper Deformation Skews Robot Evals: A Hidden Hardware Trap
DominiqueCAPaul · x · 2026-08-13
A robotics team shared a cautionary tale about a hidden hardware issue during evaluations. They initially observed a significant performance gap between two policy configurations, but investigation revealed the root cause was physical deformation of the grippers.
Suboptimal movements caused repeated stress, permanently bending a gripper tip. This shifted the actuator's position into a state unseen during training, leading to grasp failures and policy breakdowns.
The team updated the gripper design and reran all evaluations. The author reflects on how easily such unnoticed hardware deviations could lead to false conclusions about algorithmic performance.
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